The Wednesday “Just the Facts” forum, sponsored by Coalition for a Drug-Free Nevada County and Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce, featured seven panelists who oppose the Nov. 2 ballot measure to legalize marijuana, Proposition 19.

They included Nevada County District Attorney Cliff Newell, Nevada County Sheriff’s Sgt. Bill Smethers, Grass Valley Police Capt. Rex Marks, Chip Arenchild of InterWest insurance, Michelle Gregory of the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, Earle Jamison High School Principal Anita Bagwell and Aimee Hendle, a representative of the San Diego-based group Californians for Drug Free Youths.

Apparently the ironically named “Just the Facts” forum decided that Proposition 19 wasn’t a very good idea. Kudos to the participants for managing to counter the opposition so well.

10 comments to Just the Facts

Of course that’s how they do it. The key here is to note the similarity between this here anti-19 panel and the Witch trials….Briefly, here’s how it worked. People in the 16th century were ignorant, kept that way by the Church, but they weren’t stupid. Anybody with a clear head then knew that burning a few witches wouldn’t end the drought, or stop anthrax from infecting cattle. And every time people were burned it was somebody’s neighbor, or aunt, or the lady who sold rotting cabbage at the end of the road, whatever. So as a result after every spate of burnings people would begin to question the effecacy (not to mention the humainty) of burning their peers.
But the Church and town leaders had no interest in ending this, as in most areas the property, land, livestock, and you name it, were forfiet to the Church, who split the booty with the municipal officials who condoned the practice. (not all towns or countries allowed this, and coincidentally those that did found alot more Witches to burn).
So to counter this popular resistance to the idea of burning and torturing their relatives, panels of witch experts were assembled to look into the practice. But all these experts relied on the continued burning of witches for their livlihood. And they depended on made up “facts” to justify this, facts made up by their peers who also relied on witches for THEIR livlihood. They had an entire fantay science, demonology, all fabricated out of thin air. So no real discussion was allowed. These panels somehow managed to turn the need that created them on it’s head and instead, focused on…wether there were enough witch burnings to solve the problem. And the solution they came up with, decade after decade, CENTURY AFTER CENTURY? More and better torture of more and more people, to better coerce them to implicate more and more of their friends and relatives, in a quest to “solve the witch problem”. Does any of this sound familiar? This is why, when I see a slogan like “Keep Arizona Drug Free”, I alway see: “Keep Arizona Witch Free”.
As a sick sidelight, I would like to point out that the folly of humans knows no bounds. Those of you who taste victory in this struggle would do well to remember that the Witch Trials lasted 600 years.

Another aside, those burned as witches included people who were healers, herbalists, people who showed too much attention to personal hygene (washing one’s self was referred to as “the witch’s habit”)people who could read or had traveled, gypsies, jews, and single women who chose to remain single. Among others. Control over the populace and their access to anything but the bare survival minimum was excercised by the inquisitor. Torturing and burning alive anybody who had knowlege of anything better and control through fear and manipulation were the Church’s best tools. Same with the prohibitionists, ‘cept without the burning alive part.

Belief in witches and witchcraft persists in American society under the auspices of the Pentecostal/charismatic branch of Christianity. The ‘apostolic and prophetic’ wing has been active in exporting their witch superstitions to Africa, with catastrophic results. Modern witch believers still justify witch hunts by quoting Exodus 22:18 “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

All of this is on top of the religious propaganda about condoms failing to protect against HIV, which is also killing Africans. Western religious dogma, as it has been applied to African cultures, has become the modern cultural equivalent of handing out blankets infected with smallpox.

I’ve always suspected that religiously biased opposition to drug use was framed by the subconscious, inquisitorial minds of prohibitionists in such a way as to perceive the practice as a type of possession by demons, whether clearly enunciated or not. In rooting out the perceived evil, eliminationist policies such as drug enforcement are likely to resemble all other eliminationist strategies used throughout history to purge people of their beliefs and cultural practices, especially when beliefs alone are seen as a threat to the status quo.

Whether it is on the web or in a council meeting,they must be in control of the debate and only provide their propaganda with no debate or comment in order to be considered knowledgeable or even experienced with the problems prohibition has caused our country,and be able to
blame them on marijuana,unchallenged.

Any debate that refutes their basic claims of societies
harms and the reduced endangerment to children through regulation instead of prohibition throws water on the rest of their fire.

They cannot afford to let their audience and supporters
even hear anything that would make them investigate.

Servetus, this is the quote I use to counter those “moral” arguments against personal behaviors:
“It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil.” — Fredrich von Hayek, Nobel Laureate in Economics, from “The Constitution of Liberty”

I’d think just this one fact would completely disprove religion since all religions cast the male coming first. In the christian bible Eve was a piece of Adam pulled out of his body by the tribal god figurehead to give him a companion. If whoever wrote Genesis had a clue about reality it would have cast Adam as being a piece pulled from Eve, but that doesn’t work when the objective is to keep men in charge. The entire fantasy is poppycock written by men, or it is proof that god isn’t omniscient.
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Gotta love the religionist’s hypocrisy. One religion says it’s immoral for men to wear a hat in church, another says it’s immoral for a man to not wear a hat in church. The muslims require women to be completely covered to be moral, while the Ferengi view females as property, and wearing clothes would indicate their male has something to hide. Oh ok, the last one is (intentional) fiction making fun of religionists but darn if it doesn’t fit.